Touhou Kishinjou ~ Double Dealing Character (東方輝針城 ～ Double Dealing Character, lit. "Eastern Castle of Shining Needles") is the fourteenth official game of the Touhou Project. It was announced by ZUN on his personal blog on May 11, 2013, at 5:00 AM JST.[1] A playable demo containing the first three stages was released on May 26, 2013, at Reitaisai 10. The full game was released on August 12, 2013, at Comiket 84.

Contents

Gameplay

The three main playable characters are Reimu Hakurei, Marisa Kirisame, and Sakuya Izayoi, each of which have two different shot types. The major new gameplay mechanic in the game lies within the point of collection and the auto-collection of items. When you auto-collect items, either by entering the point of collection or by using a bomb, you will get a bonus item if you gather enough point or power items all at once. The bonus item differs between a bomb piece (at least 20 point or powers items) or a life piece (at least 60 point or power items). Every 5th bomb piece is replaced with a life piece.

Similar to Undefined Fantastic Object, lives and bombs are gained piece by piece. The player requires 3 life pieces to gain an extra life. 8 bomb pieces grants the player an additional bomb, and this amount never changes. Bosses may also drop bomb or life pieces.

The game also features Spell Practice mode, and each stage does not have to be finished in order to unlock it for Practice Mode, only attempted.

Concept

ZUN focused on creating a simple game for Double Dealing Character, and thus he removed some complicated game mechanics in order to create what he calls a "neither new nor retro 2000s neo-retro danmaku shooter".[1] Other than the auto-collection system, the unique gameplay system normally present in the series is absent, making it akin to Mountain of Faith in terms of style.

In his original blog announcement, ZUN stated that the resolution of the game would be doubled from 640×480 to 1280×960. He also said that the game was being developed to be resolution-independent, but that those with higher-end computers would be able to enjoy the higher resolution.

Story

Youkai are rebelling, and tsukumogami are turning up; no one knows what's happening, clouds are gathering, and a strong wind carries the sounds of a huge building. Gensokyo is full of the sounds of dissonance. The individual weapons of the three protagonists are starting to act oddly. It's their job to either take their weapons in hand and fight the youkai, or to cast their weapons aside.

Press

Double Dealing Character was first announced on ZUN's personal blog on May 11, 2013, along with a short explanation of the gameplay, confirmation on the playable characters and five in-development screenshots. It also included a basic story outline.[1] On July 19, 2013, ZUN updated his blog announcing that the web demo was available for download in the official Team Shanghai Alice page with minor bug fixes along with a short intro story.

Four days after the release of the full game at Comiket 84, ZUN released a v1.00b patch to fix bugs, such as the crash that happened with certain characters after stage 4.

On August 10, 2014, both ZUN and Playism confirmed a digital download for the game, available on the site of Playism. [2][3]

Music

Double Dealing Character has a total of 17 tracks by ZUN, with seven stage and seven boss themes, a title screen theme, an ending theme and a staff roll theme. An eighteenth track is the player score theme, which was taken from Fairy Wars (Which is originally from Mountain of Faith).

The Theme of Eastern Story appears a few times in some songs. Just like any other Windows game, the title screen is based on this melody. Also the stage 3 theme "Bamboo Forest of the Full Moon" and the stage 4 boss theme "Illusionary Joururi" has this melody that is easily heard. Later on, Seija Kijin's theme Reverse Ideology was used on the official trailer for Impossible Spell Card and in the said game itself. Another two themes (Mermaid from the Uncharted Land and Illusionary Joururi) were also re-used in the said game.